1. Scope of Invention
This invention relates generally to imprinting designs on substrate material and particularly to an apparatus for jet ink imprinting of viewable indicia onto a portion of a substrate.
2. Prior Art
Techniques for imprinting designs and other decoration onto substrates, i.e. plastics and garments, include screen printing in which a stencil on a stretched mesh frame is placed over the substrate and sprayed or squeegeed to impart ink or dye onto the substrate. Another currently available technique for this purpose is the utilization of thermo set films and hot stamping, air brushing and pressure sensitive decals. These techniques, although widely in use, nonetheless each present significant drawbacks with respect to convenience, ease of implementation of new designs, expensive equipment and excessive mess and clean-up problem, meeting environmental concerns, and compliance with rules and regulations and human safety and health problems.
The present invention utilizes an ink jet printer loaded with either single or multi-color ink within an apparatus which presents the substrate atop a platen in close proximity to the ink jet nozzle. Heretofore, the benefits of ink jet printing have been untapped as to the feeding of the substrate linearly on a flat platen under the ink jet had been limited to a flexible roll fed substrate such as paper. Movement of the platen forward and aft, in combination with side ways movement of the ink jet printer head, both controlled simultaneously by programmable or pre-programmed software of a central processing unit (c.p.u.) within the apparatus to activate appropriate control mechanisms, presents a significant stride forward. The present invention overcomes many of the drawbacks of the above prior art techniques, where as rigid flat substrates could not be decorated. Also, the substrates associated with the present invention are not only limited to garments or plastics. Additional substrates include any flat material that is of cotton or polyester material, vinyl surfaces, canvas, wood, tile, cement, magnets with vinyl or plastic coatings, and even birthday cakes using a specially formulated FDA approved ink, and paper.